This week the University of Pennsylvania’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) is celebrating its “Islam Awareness Week.” For the keynote address on Thursday, October 9, the MSA invited “Reverend” William W. Baker, a former chairman of a racist and anti-Semitic organization, the Populist Party.[1]

Baker, the founder and director of Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP) will be one of two invited speakers and the first non-Muslim ever invited to speak at this annual week-long event.[2]

Baker’s selection as speaker is bad enough, but the use of university funds to pay for it is a scandal; the Office of the Chaplain and the Office of the Vice Provost for University Life helped MSA come up with nearly $5,000 for the week-long program.[3]

Baker was in the news in 2002 when he was fired by Rev. Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral Ministries,[4] following an exposé in the Orange County Weekly, for his ties to neo-Nazism and his anti-Semitic writings. (Schuller’s California-based Crystal Cathedral is perhaps best known for its nationally syndicated television program “The Hour of Power.”)[5]

The weekly’s investigation revealed that Baker had served as the Populist Party’s chairman in 1984 and organized its convention that year. The Populist Party was an initiative of Willis Carto, the well-known neo-Nazi figure also known for founding the Institute for Historical Review, a group devoted to Holocaust denial,[6] and publisher of the nation’s foremost anti-Semitic newspaper, TheSPOTLIGHT (now reorganized as the American Free Press).

Baker has a long record of anti-Semitism; for example, his self-published 1982 diatribe, “Theft of a Nation,” called for the dismantling of the “Zionist State.”[7] In a 1983 speech to the racist Christian Patriot Defense League in Missouri, Baker referred to the Reverend Jerry Falwell as “Jerry Jewry” (for his friendliness to Jews), and his disgust at traveling to New York City, getting off the plane to meet, “pushy, belligerent American Jews.”[8]

To accusations of his neo-Nazi ties, Baker responds that he “never supported the views of Willis Carto.” He does acknowledge being chairman of the Populist Party but says it was only for a short time and claims he “publicly resigned due to infiltration from various racist individuals and organizations.”[9]

But this defense is spurious. The Populist platform distributed at 1984 convention included provisions calling for the repeal of sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the restoration of segregation laws.[10] Baker appeared as a guest on the Carto-backed “Radio Free America” program.[11] His lecture to the Christian Patriot Defense League in Missouri included numerous citations to the The SPOTLIGHT.[12]

Baker had himself called “Dr. Baker” by colleagues at the Crystal Cathedral for his “graduate study” in Jerusalem and Oxford but the exposé could not confirm he had engaged in any graduate study of any kind. Baker also called himself “professor of ancient history and sacred literature” but all evidence suggested he only taught Christian subjects for three years after he graduated from Ozark Bible College in Joplin, Missouri.[13]

Baker’s most recent book, More in Common Than You Think (1998), claims to map “the common ground between Islam and Christianity” and is promoted by such militant Islamic organizations as the Islamic Society of North America. Stephen Schwartz, an expert on militant Islam, finds it clearly “intended to bring together fringe Christians and extremist Muslims.”[14]

A review of Baker’s work reveals that he often glosses over critical differences between the Christianity and Islam. The CAMP website minimalizes the mistreatment of women in Islam and denies the threat of fundamentalist Islam.[15] Baker’s lectures at Crystal Cathedral so blatantly ignored the divinity of Jesus that it offended several moderate Protestant pastors who attended.[16]

Baker promotes himself as an “inter-faith leader” but his inter-faith work seems to be limited to a close relationship with Ahmad Kuftaro, the grand mufti of Damascus and a functionary of the Assad regime who parrots its line. (Kuftaro, for example, called the war in Iraq an “American, British, and Zionist aggression” and called on all forms of “resistence” from Muslims, “including martyrdom operations.”)[17]

Islam Awareness Week co-chairman, UPenn junior Anjum Cheema, stated recently, “The main purpose is to get a big non-Muslim audience to come out and hear what Islam is all about,” he said.[18] Baker’s purpose would seem to be quite different: misrepresenting both Christianity and Islam in an effort to build an anti-Semitic alliance.

[4] In May 2002, Crystal Cathedral issued a terse statement that they had separated “from the CAMP ministry, and Mr. Baker will be off the campus as of May 31.” Stan Brin, “Dasboot!” Orange County Weekly, Friday May 17, 2002, News; Pg. 11.

[17]“A statement by Shaikh Ahmad Kuftaro, Grand Mufti of Syria and Head of the Supreme Council of Fatwa, on the American, British and Zionist aggressive campaign against the brotherly Iraqi people,” March 26, 2003. http://www.studyquran.com/English/statement.htm

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